(http://www.jewishworldreview.com)
I’M READY TO START THE 2000 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, how about you?

It’s
obvious that not much will be accomplished in Congress this year:
President Clinton is a laughingstock, with a huge "R" for rapist
plastered across his head, and has to take a poll even to decide when to
move his bowels. He speaks in generalities about "saving" Social
Security and Medicare, and the need to overhaul the country’s
educational system, but he’s a scarred and diminished man who’s
determined to simply fill out his term. Even a person with just modest
courage would’ve resigned months ago and ceded power to his handpicked
successor. However, Clinton has snake-oiled both his staff and the
congressional Democrats into a rallying cry to "move on." And yes, he
hopes that Monica Lewinsky has a "good life."

Kennedy

One senior aide told The Washington Post’s John Harris last week: "Bill
Clinton has got a problem. If he weren’t president he would be in
counseling... But I don’t think because he’s got a sickness, that
corrupts everything about him... He is a great president."

Teddy
Kennedy, of all people, had the chutzpah to tell Harris, referring to
Monica Lewinsky’s Barbara Walters interview and the explosive Juanita
Broaddrick allegations of rape: "Enough is enough. For most people
there’s a certain fatigue that sets in on these matters." I guess that’s
the same fatigue that set in after Chappaquiddick, revelations of his
own sexual harassment in Washington restaurants and the Palm Beach
escapade with his son and nephew.

Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, who was upbraided by
Clinton for questioning his sexual conduct in a cabinet meeting several
months ago, now is back on the team. While she takes Broaddrick’s
charges "seriously," she told Harris, "I’m both a patriot and a
professional; I serve the nation and the president." One could argue
that if she were truly a patriot she’d have left Clinton’s employ long
ago, but the time for expecting any show of integrity or independence
from this administration is long past.

Meanwhile, while Clinton pays lipservice to all the buzz issues that the
Barney Frank wing of the Democratic Party champions, he’s got nothing on
his mind but restoring his reputation. One way to do that is making sure
Al Gore becomes the next president and the Democrats regain the House
(with three Democratic senators retiring, chances for a Senate takeover
are slim).

Bob and Bubba

In fact, where was Clinton, aka Mr. Campaign Finance Reform,
last week? Why, in New Jersey, headlining a big bucks fundraiser for
Sen. Robert Torricelli, one of his biggest supporters and the man who
claims credit for hatching the Hillary Clinton for Senate media farce.
And wouldn’t you know it, Torricelli, his war chest now $2 million
larger, won’t even face reelection for three more years! Goodness, our
President has his priorities straight.

Trouble is, the Republican-controlled Congress, equally beholden to
polls, and needlessly worried about the fallout from the impeachment
trial, is shadow-boxing with Clinton and Dick Gephardt, abandoning
principles daily. It’s puzzling. Granted, Trent Lott has been a disaster
as Senate majority leader, demonstrating none of the abilities needed
for that post. And where has Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles been
hiding for the past three months? I had assumed that he’d be an able
replacement, or at least a Jiminy Cricket for Lott, but maybe he’s under
his desk, waiting for Larry Flynt to publish a story about how he banged
a coed while intoxicated back in Oklahoma some years ago.

As for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, saying he’s a riddle is too
charitable—he’s just another bureaucrat who’s puffed up with his new
power and wants to be friends with everyone. At least that’s what I
surmise from all his "bipartisanship" crap. But that’s a tactic that
won’t work in today’s Washington political culture. As The Wall Street
Journal editorialized on Feb. 23: "Bipartisanship in modern Washington
simply means that Republicans must always give ground, while Democrats
never concede a thing."

Latest example? As Paul Bedard reports in the
current U.S. News & World Report, congressional Republicans are
considering joining forces with Democrats to boost the minimum wage. All
of Washington is hopeless; that’s why it’s so important that an outsider
like George W. Bush is starting his campaign for president early. Let a
successful GOP governor lead the way and whip Congress back into shape.

Kasich

It’s a shame that John Kasich is making a quixotic run for the White
House: He’s by far the most forceful advocate of the 10-percent tax cut
that the GOP proposed, and quickly jettisoned, a month ago. He’s
explained with clarity and concision the benefits of such legislation, a
trick that no other man or woman in his party has managed to pull off.
Look, I’m as sick of his I’m-the-son-of-a-mailman shtick as the next
American, but it helps when the Charlie Rangels and Teddy Kennedys in
the opposing party demagogue that any tax cut is just for the rich.

Kasich, when pounded by hostile liberal pundits on the talk shows about
a tax cut favoring the affluent, simply explains that such a measure is
fair and will help everyone. Journalists like Lars-Erik Nelson thunder
that even a 10-percent tax cut will just benefit the fatcats on Wall
Street, ignoring the simple fact that those people he denigrates pay the
vast majority of taxes in the first place.

Nelson is so doctrinaire in
his socialist views that he’s even opposed to a reduction of estate
taxes, perhaps the most heinous form of government interference into the
lives of citizens. Why should a man or woman, who’s worked for 40 or 50
years to provide for their family, whether he or she is a stockbroker, a
farmer or mechanic, have their savings plundered by the government upon
their death?

It’s ironic that one of the sharpest contenders for the GOP nomination
doesn’t have a prayer of winning. I’m not speaking of Alan Keyes here,
although I hope there’s a spot for him in Bush’s cabinet, but rather Dan
Quayle, the one-term vice president who’s still the butt of third-rate
comedians. Quayle, who was his own worst enemy while in office,
providing a verbal gaffe once a month for an eager mainstream press, has
been more articulate about foreign and domestic policy than any other
declared or presumed candidate.

Quayle

But aside from a bloc of extremely
conservative voters, often members of the currently less influential
Christian Coalition, Quayle simply doesn’t have the support that Bush
commands. He insists that his past whipping-boy status can be overcome,
telling Dan Balz of The Washington Post last month that "The American
people are very fair…they love a comeback... They support underdogs.
This time around, since I’m not the front-runner the media may be more
inclined to be a little bit helpful." I don’t recall when Quayle was
ever the front-runner, but that aside, it’s only a man who’s in a bubble
of presidential aspirations who can’t see the futility of his own
campaign.

Aside from Tucker Carlson’s March 1 cover story in The Weekly Standard,
"Quayle Gets Serious," in which his famous, and prescient, "Murphy
Brown" speech was given a lot of play, as well as his foreign policy
agenda, Quayle’s candidacy hasn’t generated much heat. Even the Standard
story has to be a little suspect, especially when Carlson praised Quayle
for hiring a "smart" staff. As everyone knows, at least in the Beltway,
Carlson’s boss, Bill Kristol, was the vice president’s chief adviser
during President Bush’s administration, a fact the author should’ve, but
didn’t, mention. Quayle’s still remembered as the grown-up who couldn’t
spell potato.

That’s a shame, because Quayle is hardly bereft of important ideas. On
the topic of taxes, for example, he cites Presidents Kennedy and Reagan
in the value of lowering them, especially in light of Clinton’s drastic
increase of 1993. Writing in The Wall Street Journal on Jan. 25, he
proposed the following: "We need to change the tax code radically.

Whether we ultimately wish to adopt a flat tax or a national sales tax
is an open question—and a long debate. In the interim, we must abolish
the marriage penalty and death tax, cut corporate and individual capital
gains taxes by 30%, and neutralize the current bias against investment
by reducing the top corporate income tax rate to 28%... Furthermore, I
propose that we simplify the tax code by eliminating most tax
preferences, credits and deductions, while preserving core incentives
such as interest on home mortgages, charitable contributions and
health-care, retirement and education expenses."

Drudge

Matt Drudge posted an exclusive report on his website on Feb. 28 that
one of the presidential contenders’ staff is searching for a long-ago
photo, if in fact it exists, of the politician dancing on the top of a
bar with no clothes on. A "well-placed campaign source" told Drudge, who
calls the pol a "hotshot": "Not that it matters after what we’ve been
through with Bill Clinton, but we do need to know what could be used
against us. We do not even know if there is a picture out there...we’re
getting to the bottom of it."

No one doubts that the presidential aspirant in question is Gov. Bush,
who’s made no secret of his heavy drinking and wild bachelor days a
generation ago. But Drudge’s campaign source is correct: Clinton has
lowered the bar for personal behavior so dramatically that even a
pedophile wouldn’t automatically be ruled out for public office. That’s
hyperbole, of course, but what’s a nude picture compared to charges of
rape, serial adultery, shady financial transactions, a pathological
inability to tell the truth on even the most trivial matter and a
pattern of obstructing justice?

Hostile members of the press, who prefer Gore but won’t say so, and
praise Republican John McCain because of his war record, denigrate
Bush’s high numbers in the preliminary presidential polls by claiming
that people are confusing him with his father, the former president.

"What do we know about Bush," is the common refrain, "where does he
stand on the issues?" Well, what the hell did these same pundits know
about Bill Clinton when they anointed him the Democratic front-runner in
late ’91 before a single caucus or primary vote was cast? They did know
that he gave such a long-winded speech at the ’88 Democratic convention
that people applauded when he was finally through. They knew of
womanizing rumors but didn’t follow up on them, leaving that sort of
trash to the "supermarket tabloids." Had the press been more vigilant
eight years ago it’s likely Clinton would still be in Arkansas.

Stephanopoulos

George Stephanopoulos, the Clinton aide who’s now making millions as a
pundit, author and lecturer, says in a March 15 Newsweek interview,
promoting his book All Too Human, that his former boss "threw it all
away."

Asked if Clinton is fit to be president, Stephanopoulos, no
longer on speaking terms with the President and Hillary, says: "He’s too
fit to be removed, but knowing what we know now, I don’t think he’d be
fit enough to be elected." Glad you cashed in, Furious George, but
you’re full of shit. Anyone who worked as closely as Stephanopoulos did
with Clinton in the ’92 campaign knew about Gennifer Flowers, Juanita
Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Whitewater and a slew of other crimes and
scandals that would’ve eliminated Clinton from the running if only a
besotted press had dug deeper. Stephanopoulos’ dissembling about
believing in Clinton’s message doesn’t wash: A man of his intelligence
had to know that Clinton had no message.

What is known about Gov. Bush is that he shuns the social demagoguery of
the extreme right-wing; he’s pro-immigration and has a strong record on
education in Texas; he’s pro-life but won’t make that the centerpiece of
his campaign; he’s in favor of tax cuts; he supports a foreign policy
that is firm and doesn’t coddle dictators; and that his slogan is
"compassionate conservatism."

Many have mocked this phrase, including
the bitter, perennial candidate Lamar Alexander, who calls them "weasel
words." That’s nonsense. In an election year where Republicans are seen
as evil, an unfair tag affixed to them by an adept White House War Room
and compliant press, it’s important that the GOP nominee prove what
Republican governors have across the nation: that limited government and
letting Americans having more of a hand in determining their own fate is
not evil.

Even Robert Scheer, the 60s time traveler who writes for the Los Angeles
Times, praises Bush, demonstrating just how much trouble Al Gore will
have if he ultimately faces the Governor. From Scheer’s Feb. 9 column:
"Bush’s reelection in Texas demonstrated strong appeal across party
lines precisely because his message was one of inclusion. He refers to
himself as a ‘unifier not a divider.’"

Wisconsin’s Gov. Tommy Thompson, a man whom I respect, gave his
impressions of the leading GOP candidates to the Associated Press last
month. Often mentioned as a contender himself, Thompson didn’t have many
positive things to say about the front-runners. On Bush: "He hasn’t
really done much as a governor in regards of doing anything new or
innovative." That’s nonsense and Thompson knows it. I’m afraid he’s just
annoyed that because he looks like Fred Flintstone he’ll never be the
GOP nominee.

The New York Times, in editorializing on March 3 about Bush’s formation
of an exploratory committee, was typically contradictory. On the one
hand, the writer says Bush is "unknown" and vague on domestic issues; on
the other he’s "been an unusually effective Governor with a record of
spending money on education and showing tolerance toward minority
groups, homosexuals and immigrants."

The Times, which would prefer Gore
(or, if the Vice President is too damaged by his association with
Clinton, Bill Bradley), makes too much of Pat Buchanan’s candidacy,
probably because they hope to promote a bitter fight within the
Republican Party. But Buchanan, while intelligent and entertaining—who
can help be charmed when he cracks up at his own jokes?—is yesterday’s
news. He’s a candidate who speaks, in economically flush times, to a
small constituency: Buchanan’s passionate stands against free trade and
immigration, and his pandering to the Christian Coalition, won’t attract
many voters.

Buchannan

It was fascinating to see how the rival dailies New York Times and
Washington Post played Bush’s announcement of his exploratory committee
over the weekend. The Post’s Dan Balz, on Sunday, writing about the
phenomenal amount of support Bush has already attracted from GOP
officials across the country, said: "The Texas capital is in the grip of
a phenomenon that may be unique in the annals of presidential campaign
start-ups. As a slew of other Republican candidates make pilgrimages to
Iowa and New Hampshire and struggle for money, media attention and
political support, the world is rushing to George Bush’s door in what
has become the information age equivalent of William McKinley’s
front-porch campaign of 1896."

The Times, in a reprise of its biased news coverage of President Bush’s
unsuccessful reelection effort in ’92, ran on Monday with a picture of
Bush’s announcement in Austin, with the derisive headline, "How Many
Does It Take to Decide?" The fact that a cross section of GOP leaders,
including Rep. J.C. Watts, Gov. John Engler, Sen. Paul Coverdell, George
Schultz, Haley Barbour and Rep. Jennifer Dunn, were all on hand for
Bush’s announcement didn’t impress the Times.

As an economic hawk who is live-and-let-live on social issues, let me
repeat one more time why I support Bush: He can win. Alexander,
Buchanan, Quayle, Keyes, Kasich and Bob Smith don’t have a chance and
will be footnotes by next March. Elizabeth Dole’s a nightmare; in
addition to the baggage of her husband peddling Viagra, she’s a robot
who’s never been elected to office and has articulated just one campaign
theme: integrity. Well, after Clinton, dear Liddy, no shit. In a
Manchester speech last month, Dole took a swipe at Bush, saying,
"America needs leaders, not labels." Steve Forbes is a decent, honest
man with brilliant economic ideas, but is unelectable because he looks
and speaks like a geek and the Democrats will class-warfare the bejesus
out of him. He’d make a fine secretary of the Treasury.

McCain

McCain is a time bomb who racks up favorable press from baby boomers who
feel guilty they didn’t serve in Vietnam. His baggage in Arizona will
catch up to him, once the press decides to do its job. Right now,
liberals like The Wall Street Journal’s Al Hunt and The Boston Globe’s
David Nyhan are sucking up to McCain, citing his POW confinement (Hunt
says five and a half years, Nyhan claims six and a half), and
willingness to buck the Republican Party on campaign finance reform and
tobacco legislation. It’s all disingenuous, for these two columnists
would surely vote for Gore or Bradley over McCain: Their interest is in
stopping Bush. Nyhan even has the audacity to write on March 5, in
praising McCain’s call for a clean primary fight: "It’s just that I’ve
seen more of the destroying than the disarming in national politics of
late. The politics of personal destruction has been riding tall in the
Washington saddle. And the party of impeachment does not exactly come to
this election with clean hands." I wonder if Nyhan splits his Globe fee
with David Bonior, the paleoliberal Michigan Democrat who doubles as his
ghostwriter.

The Washington Post’s Mary McGrory thinks that McCain might do well with
New Hampshire voters. On March 4, she wrote: "The fact that he is out of
step with his Senate colleagues on such subjects as campaign reform and
tobacco may serve him well in a state that has gone from a Republican
majority to a preponderance of independents."

That’s wishful thinking:
New Hampshire citizens are furiously anti-tax, unlike Beltway pundits,
and I doubt they’ll agree with McCain’s position on tobacco. McGrory
goes on to quote Warren Rudman, a former New Hampshire senator who backs
McCain: "Rudman concedes that Bush has enormous and obvious
advantages—good looks, pots of money, a famous family name, great appeal
to right and left, an excellent record as governor of the nation’s
third-largest state. He is antiabortion but also pro-immigrant; he is
militant about educational reform. ‘But how can you say he can unite the
party when he has yet to open his mouth on any national issues?’ asks
Rudman." Say what? What are immigration, abortion and education if not
"national issues"?

As voters will find if McCain’s candidacy survives until New Hampshire,
his strengths lie mostly in the adulation of reporters. One newspaper
writer in Tucson told me last week: "McCain looked stupid on CNN last
night with Wolf Blitzer. He took ‘personal responsibility for the
failure of his first marriage.’ I mean, who gives a darn? Charlie
Keating’s ex-daughter-in-law tried to sell me pictures of McCain and
Keating dressed up together as pirates in the Bahamas at a party. I
fucked up and didn’t buy them five years ago."

Bush is a popular governor of the country’s third largest state; he’s
photogenic and can deliver a rousing speech; he has access to the money
needed to contest seriously for the nomination; he has a loyal family
that will campaign with the same gusto that the Kennedy clan did in
1960; he’d be the first GOP nominee under 60 in a generation and, unlike
previous candidates, will draw women; and he already has the support of
half the GOP’s governors.

Perot

Granted, Gore is a fierce and smart competitor in debates, as he proved
against Quayle and Ross Perot. And he’ll certainly have the mainstream
press behind him; hell, he already does. What other daily but The New
York Times would’ve run this ludicrous headline on Feb. 17: "Lewinsky
Ordeal May Have Put Gore on Firmer Ground for 2000"? Reporter Richard L.
Berke, whose prose reads as if it’s from the pages of The Nation or
Mother Jones, writes that Gore is the inevitable nominee, probably true
but an unremarkable conclusion, partially because of his "cautious
navigation of the Lewinsky scandal."

At The New Republic, owner Marty Peretz’s desire for a Gore presidency
chugs along. His reporter Dana Milbank, who drew the short straw this
year in acting as Peretz’s lapdog while covering the Gore campaign,
admits in the March 22 issue that the "JugGoreNaut" has hit a snag: Bill
Bradley. Gore’s candidacy was so overwhelming, so inevitable, says
Milbank, that everyone but Bradley was scared out of the race.

Unfortunately, he writes, the "JugGoreNaut" strategy might’ve worked too
well. Milbank’s conclusion is suspect: "If there’s one bit of good news
for Gore in his looming slide [in the polls] it’s that the same thing
will happen to George W., who now leads Gore by wide margins. A Fox News
poll in February put Bush at 55 percent support to Gore’s 34 percent.
Already, though, Gore is closing the gap to within the margin of error
in various other polls." And those "various other polls" Milbank doesn’t
cite; probably they were taken at The New Republic’s office or don’t
really exist.

What will Gore say when asked in a debate about his statement that Bill
Clinton is "one of the greatest American presidents"? How will he
explain away Clinton’s scandalous personal life, as well as his own
illegal campaign contributions in the ’96 campaign? Bush is the one
candidate who can destroy Gore, who can symbolize the change that
Americans want in the White
House.

JWR contributing columnist Russ Smith --- AKA "MUGGER --- is the editor-in-chief and publisher of New York Press. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

02/26/99: Springsteen Ain’t No Chopped Liver; Vanity Press Musings03/05/99:
This Must Be the New World:
The Mainstream Is Left Behind02/26/99: Hillary, Juanita & Rudy Kazootie; First Baker, then Rich and Soon Lewis02/24/99: The New Yorker Takes the Local:
Mister Hertzberg Strikes Out; A Search for the Clemens Upside 02/19/99: The Howell Raines Conspiracy02/17/99: History Lessons: An Immigrant’s Advice02/12/99:The Man Who Owns the World02/10/99:The Impeachment Trial Splatters: Lindsey Graham Emerges a Hero02/05/99: A Slight Stumble for Bush01/29/99: Rich Is Back in the Tank01/29/99: Not So Fast, Mr. & Mrs. Pundit01/27/99:This Is Not America:
Clinton’s Set to Walk and Party On, Suckers01/25/99:Sniffles and High Fever: Kids Say the Darndest Things01/20/99: Whole Lott(a) Waffling Goin' On01/14/99: Senator Hillary Rodham in 2000:
The First Step Back to the Oval Office01/08/99: Drudge Is the Hero01/06/99 : MUGGER & the Martians12/30/98 : Last Licks of ’98:
Some Heroes, Several Villains & Many Idiots12/17/98 : Boy Mugger's obsession12/11/98: Irving’s the King Wolf12/09/98: What do Matt Drudge and Tom Hanks have in common?11/26/98: Starr’s Magnificent Moment11/18/98: Who could have imagined!? 11/11/98: Send Dowd Down to the Minors11/05/98:
Feeding Gore to
a shark named Bush10/30/98: "Pope" Jann and his rappers speak ---it's time for fun again10/28/98: Lowered expectations, but the GOP holds the cards10/23/98: Speaking from Zabar’s: Michael Moore!10/21/98: Bubba redux?
His uptick won't last10/16/98: Gore for President: The Bread Lines Are Starting to Form